The Nets have tried to install a culture that is built on developing a family atmosphere, a brotherhood, inside the team’s locker room. But no team is immune to the business side of basketball, the movement of players in and out of that locker room.
So, last Thursday, as the front office moved two of the team’s most popular players —Trevor Booker and Sean Kilpatrick and brought in Jahlil Okafor and Nik Stauskas— it also tried to insure that everyone understood why things had changed.
“The plan going forward is to always inform these guys of important decisions like that, change of roster,” Atkinson told reporters before the team left Mexico City.